A WOMAN who suffered a fatal brain aneurysm has given birth to twin boys at a Michigan hospital - weeks after she was declared officially brain dead. Christine Bolden, 26, who had been happy and healthy only moments before the tragic March incident, suddenly got a horrible pain and fell to the ground.

CHILDREN who go to before-school care early in their first year of school have been found to have higher levels of hyperactivity and behaviour such as hurting others, tantrums and fighting. A controversial study by Kay Margetts of Melbourne University's Graduate School of Education suggests the increasing trend towards putting children in before-school care while parents commute to work has a damaging impact on their performance, both academic and social.

INDEPENDENT Andrew Wilkie is set to renew his push for poker machine reform in the wake of Peter Slipper's decision to stand aside as Speaker. Fresh polling is showing 70 per cent of people support introducing precommitment technology or $1 bet limits.

Nothing excites Australians like house prices and mortgage rates. It is no surprise, therefore, that the recent decision by major banks to increase interest rates "outside the cycle" - that is, independently of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) - has led to hyperventilation among consumers and politicians.

Parliamentary committee staff has never had more work thrust upon it than the interest generated by three bills seeking to amend the Marriage Act. A staggering number of public contributions were made to the House and Senate committees?—?nearly 300,000 by last Friday?—?including written submissions, form letters and the curious introduction of the parliamentary web survey. In the Senate, committee secretariat made the decision that its approximately 75,000 written submissions were too many to process and “only” a few hundred would be made public.

The Conservative party is split over the Government's gay marriage plans, the oldest Tory think tank has said. The Government plans to reform marriage so that the definition is no longer restricted to a union between a man and a woman, but can also include same-sex couples.

New research from the US-based Gallup group suggests marital status has a strong influence on wellbeing. The survey of more than 350,000 Americans found that wellbeing scores differed according to whether people were married, single, cohabiting, divorced or separated. Married people had the highest wellbeing score with 68.8 – 2.6 points above the national average. They were followed by single people (65.0), the widowed (63.5), and cohabitees (63.3). Divorcees were found to have a lower wellbeing score (59.7), followed by separated people (55.9).

A FEDERAL Liberal MP has accused Peter Slipper of being a "protected species", saying his former colleague has been allowed to repay tens of thousands of dollars wrongly claimed as legitimate travel expenses.

IT was only last week that Andrew Wilkie, trying to deal himself back into relevance, warned the government it may need him yet. The Tasmanian declared that if the government did not make semantic changes to the watered-down poker machine reforms it put together after reneging on their original deal, then he would become ''a ticking time bomb'' between now and the next election

A "revenge porn" website which sparked global fury by publishing reader-submitted "pornographic souvenirs from relationships gone sour" has been shut down after its owner agreed to sell it to an anti-bullying website.

IT is nonsense to talk of population ageing as a problem. Rather, its main cause -- the immense rise in human life expectancy -- is perhaps society's greatest achievement. But it does create challenges, and providing aged care is central among them.